Sat-ND, 30.04.1998

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included: Copyright 1998, Peter C Klanowski

Nah, I don't really wanna talk
about the temporary ban imposed on Sat-ND by the EU Commission's
Office of Silly Newsletters. Neither will I comment on jokes with
explicit sexual contents anymore. You disappointed me, really, but I
can take that <g>

Hey, all you Roman Catholics: if
you want some REAL smut including incest,
men who (like the hyper-wise King Solomon) have 700 wives and
300 concubines, adultery, hills of foreskin,
people who "eat their own dung and drink their own piss,"
[KI 18:27, IS 36:12 (KJV)] -- just read the Holy Bible (Old
Testament) instead! Yes, it's all there.

Loads of gratuitous violence,
too. 1SA 18:27: David murders 200 Philistines, then
cuts off their foreskins. There's even some cannibalism! KI
6:29 "So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I
said to her, 'Give up your son so we may eat him,' but she had
hidden him." Too bad! Maybe he would have even tasted even
better? Yummy! Crunchy children. Barbecue your sons, all you
Christians, but don't forget to add some curry!

So all you
dirty perverts out there, believe in GOD, Jesus
and the holy something!Join the Roman Catholic
Church today!

They understand your needs.
There's a tiny exception, though. Male homosexuals need not apply as
the OT decrees that they are to be put to death (LE 20:13; female
homosexuality is not considered in the OT.)

Note that modern bible
translations may have been bowdlerised, but already the King James
Version says "stones" when the original text reads
"testicles."

Oops... I got carried away a bit.
So sorry. However, if you want more details, I'll set up a Bible
section within this so-called newsletter. Better not ask for it, it's
too disgusting.

Let me draw your attention to
today's LAW & ORDER section instead. It contains two
contributions by readers reacting on my recent comments about DVB in
particular and copyright issues in general. While the first one adds
some details about DVB zone codes (and how to work around them :-),
the second one is a comment that at first glimpse deals with DVB as
well. You will at closer scrutiny discover that it's not only me who
thinks that all the digital revolution nonsense is more or less just
about selling you the the same old stuff over and over again.

DELAY
OF DAY

by I R Baboon

No
Iridiums again

No go for two Iridiums in China. I R not confuse with five
Iridiums in USA.

LAUNCHES

Kosmos
2350 up

The satellite Kosmos-2350 was put into what looks a geostationary
transfer orbit by a rocket of the Proton class from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. There are contradicting reports, but an
orbit with an apogee of almost 36,000 kilometers is rather unlikely
to be a circular low-Earth orbit as my favourite news agency claimed.

SATELLITES

Fly
me to the moon

As reported by my good old friend Quentin J Esrom in his
Serious and Sensible Satellite News, Hughes Global Services (HGS) is
currently trying to put the ill-fated Asiasat 3 into a geosynchronous
orbit with the help of a moon-flyby.

There's not much to add to that story expect the URLs where you
can get more information. First of all, Hughes Global Services has a
Web site at http://www.hughesglobal.com/.

Secondly, you can find out about the current status of the mission
on Analytical Graphics Inc.'s Web site at
http://www.stk.com/asiasat3/.
Why there?

To prepare for the mission, HGS has been using Analytical
Graphics' STK/Navigator software, which has been instrumental in
planning the series of manoeuvres that will "swing the
spacecraft around the moon and move it into a more practical plane."
There are quite a few nice pictures there, and you can even check the
satellite's current position.

By the way: AGI said in a statement that "The
software enabled Hughes engineers to determine the fuel burns needed
to boost the satellite's apogee and allow it to perform the
swing-by."

Compare that to what Ronald V. Swanson, HGS
president, said in a press release: "Because this has never been
done before, we don't know exactly how much propellant we'll use.
We've made our best estimates, based on 35 years of building and
operating satellites, as well as on computer models, but there are no
guarantees."

SOHO
and the sunspot bug

The European Space Agency ESA in a press release warned
computer users from what it called the Sunspot Bug. The ESA/NASA
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) can't prevent that but
forecast dangerous coronal mass ejections.

Good news first: ESA and NASA have decided to extend the SOHO
mission to 2003. This means that SOHO, having observed the sun in its
quietest state in 1996, will also see it at its most tumultuous, when
the count of dark sunspots on the sun's face rises to a maximum
around the year 2000. There's an eleven-year solar cycle that
determines the sun's activity, which affects all kinds of electrical
and electronic equipment on Earth.

During the last sunspot maximum, in 1989-91, solar storms caused
power failures in Canada and Sweden and destroyed or damaged several
satellites. Some computers crashed as a result of impacts by solar
particles. Since then the human species has become more dependent
upon satellites and computers, and advanced microchips are more
vulnerable to the sun's electromagnetic effects and particles.

To the Millennium Bug, a problem involving software in the
transition to the year 2000, one must add the physical threat of the
sunspot bug, ESA said in a press release. However, the Millennium bug
is really no problem for 99.9 percent of modern software, and it
remains to be seen whether computers in a metal casing will suffer
problems. On the other hand, many other modern gadgets use
microprocessors and memory chips, including TV sets, satellite
receivers, mobile phones, etc. They're usually not shielded.

How SOHO can help

SOHO is the world's chief watchdog for the sun. From a special
vantage point 1.5 million kilometres out in space, where the sun
never sets, the spacecraft observes solar activity for 24 hours a
day. Its images go to the regional warning centres of the
International Space Environment Service, which alert engineers
responsible for power systems, spacecraft and other technological
systems to impending effects on the Earth's environment.

Revelations

SOHO also performs some 'fundamental' research and has in the
meantime come up with quite a few surprises:

Magnetic waves heat up the sun's atmosphere which reaches
temperatures of millions of degrees C, compared with less than 6000
degrees at the sun's visible surface.

SOHO instruments found sub-surface 'jet streams' of super-hot gas
which can be thought of as rivers inside the sun. They may play a
role in the sun's 11-year cycle of sunspot activity.

It was also discovered that interstellar atoms that become charged
and accelerated in encounters with the solar wind--some 'tennis' with
hydrogen atoms. Even a helium breeze from outer space has been
detected.

CHANNELS

Fictional
newscasts

In a movie to be released on May 8, the NBC-Microsoft joint
venture will make be featured--as a station that withholds important
news. Unlike CNN, MSNBC seems to have no problems with that.

Okay, it's yet another Spielberg movie, and it's about a comet
approaching the Earth. [How exciting, never seen any movie on that
subject before, ha ha.] It's more or less about a White House
reporter who uncovers a secret contingency plan but agrees to
withhold the story at the president's request.

Let's face it: they probably would all be doing that for
the sake of 'national security.' However, CNN didn't want to be
depicted that way, and that's how MSNBC got the role. CNN spokesman
Steve Haworth said the network's new review committee turned down the
request because it was an "inappropriate vehicle for CNN to be
involved in," adding "that's not how we would cover the
news."

The CNN committee was set up after the network had been critisised
for allowing its reporters and anchors to appear in "The Lost
World: Jurassic Park" and other films. While MSNBC only said it
wouldn't allow their reporters to appear in movies, the major U.S.
networks ABC, CBS and NBC said they won't lend their network names to
fictional newscasts.

It works like this: DVD players read the regional code of the
disc. If the code is different from theirs, they will refuse to play
the disc. The only exception: the discs coded "Zone All".
In Europe, the first batch of DVD discs has been released earlier
this month. In France, Italy or Benelux there are already some 40
titles available, all of them Zone 2 (as the players). European
players don't work with U.S. discs, but they do play Japanese DVDs,
provided your TV likes NTSC. [How many Europeans speak
Japanese?--Ed.]

The general assumption of insiders is that Regional Coding is a
hypocritical system set in place to provide some kind of pro-forma
"official" protection. In practice, many many shops in
Europe currently ship modified players that are able to play all
zones (also called "dezoned" players.) Debating whether
this is legal or not is besides the purpose of this post. The fact
remains that--as those involved say--modifying a DVD isn't apparently
much harder than, say, devising a gizmo which allows Sony's
PlayStation to play imported games.

I've read that breaking the protection on first generation DVD
players was very easy. The current second generation models are
reported to be a bit tougher, but not too much. In fact, some of
those have already been dezoned. Besides, many shops say that they
can circumvent Macrovision protection for a price.

Fact is that, if you go to the Virgin Megastore on the
Champs-Elysées right now, you'll find plenty of Zone 1 films
on DVD. Their policy: "we only sell titles which aren't
officially released in Europe on DVD yet". Even if you live in a
small town, you won't have trouble finding a shop which sells by
mail-order zone 1 discs or U.S. players, and modified all-zone
European models. My impression is that Regional Coding is only there
as a sort of measure to prevent parallel imports from exceeding a
certain share. People who don't want too much hassle can stick with
official Zone 2 DVDs. Movie buffs and true fans won't have any
problems to access all the 6 zones.

Copyright
= the right to copy?

by Chris Billington

Anti-copying measures aimed at consumers are more related to
making the consumer pay multiple times for the same material on
different media and in different territories than preventing
copyright abuse.

Very few people are going to make 'high-quality' digital copies
and give or sell them to their friends, in quantities that would
materially affect the revenues of the copyright owners (usually not
the original producers, of course, but people who have paid for the
rights and now want to squeeze maximum cash out of them).

These guys won't be happy until we have to pay a fee via smartcard
every time we listen to or view their 'classic' material. It's only a
matter of time before radio sets with smartcard slots appear...

The real hole in the argument is shown when the activities of
organised commercial pirates are considered. Here in Hong Kong, the
Anti-Corruption Commission (ICAC) just arrested a senior Customs
official in an operation simultaneous with a customs raid on a pirate
VCD 'factory'. A whole production line of brand-new high-tech
equipment was seised--including a 'stamper' machine that is used for
putting on copy protection, 'country' [or 'zone'] protection and
other codes, and a DVD authoring system/pressing plant.

Several million pirate VCDs were seised. The production capacity
of the factory is 1.2 million copies a day... This is just one
factory, in the rural New Territories of Hong Kong--China itself is
dotted with them too. Let's say there are 100 just for the China
market. For consumer copy-protection to have an equivalent effect,
120 million consumers in China would have to be making copies at the
rate of one a day. The argument is analogous to that for free trade
versus protection and tariffs.

If the material was priced at a reasonable level, everyone who
wanted one could afford a copy at a price they wanted to pay, and the
pirates and copiers would have no reason to exist. The
artificially-raised prices of this recycled material imposed by the
new 'copyright owners' (it's called 'leveraging the back catalogue')
lead to copying, i.e. smuggling.

What worries the MBA-toting media execs is that they are closing
the stable door after the horse has long gone. They are attempting to
raise prices by retrospectively limiting supply of a good that was
formerly available for much less (e.g. 'free to air' TV and radio).
There is so little quality new material on offer that in order to
meet their business plans 90% of their catalogue is recycled, so
millions of copies already exist 'out there'. Ironically, since
consumers of pirate material are the least choosy about quality, the
argument that consumer copy protection is now necessary because
digital technology makes 'perfect' copies possible (DVD? Perfect??)
is weak.

Apparently the bootleg VCD's of 'Titanic' now available just about
everywhere in Asia were made by pointing a video camera at the screen
in the cinema, and come complete with popcorn-munching, coke-burping
and farting sound effects...

Have you noticed how much more consumers of 'digital media' are
paying for the same level of 'leisure entertainment' than they did 15
years ago--but half of it is the same stuff they were consuming then?
Yet they're still paying advertising costs in their supermarket
basket, or their TV licence to the state channels. Funny that...!

Pay-per-view
discs?

It sounds rather sensible in the first place. Instead of going to
a video shop, renting a video cassette and having to bring it back
next Monday, you buy a disc the size of a CD for less than US$5.
Inserted to a special player, it will allow you to watch a movie for
48 hours after having inserted the disc for the first time. The
system is called Digital Video Express, or Divx for short.

Divx-equipped players will play all standard DVD discs, but the
lower-cost Divx rental discs cannot be played on standard DVD
players. The system seems to have an advantage over renting video
cassettes: The consumer owns the disc and is therefore never required
to return it, eliminating all late fees. On the other hand, this is
of course a waste of valuable resources (unless Divx also offers some
disc recycling. They probably don't, but neither does AOL, methinks.)

The viewing period can be extended, and for many titles, consumers
will be able, through the player, to convert a disc to unlimited
viewing for a one-time fee.

However, some say that "When you currently purchase a video,
laser disc, or open DVD, that disc is yours. You can watch it over
and over and over again as many times as you want (or your family can
tolerate). You can also watch it today, tomorrow, next week, or even
next year! Divx discs expire after two days!"

True, but at US$5 it's much cheaper than any video you actually
buy. There's no real difference to any rental video, expect
that the two-day period starts whenever you want it, and that you
don't have to return the medium. Still, you can convert it to a real
DVD anytime you want to. In this case, I don't really know what the
fuss is all about (except that I don't like the thought wasting
resources, but maybe some hackerz may turn up with a method to
convert Divx discs into working DVDs.)

The main resistance, of course, seems to come from video rental
shops who are afraid their profits might fold as with the Divx model
the money goes to Digital Video Express instead--especially when
customers decide to extend their viewing time or even buy the disc.

JOKE
DU JOUR

Late one night, a burglar broke into a
house that he thought was empty. He tiptoed through the living room
but suddenly he froze in his tracks when he heard a loud voice say:
"Jesus is watching you."

Silence returned to the house, so the
burglar crept forward again. "Jesus is watching you," the
voice boomed again. The burglar stopped dead again. He was
frightened. Frantically, he looked all around. In a dark corner, he
spotted a bird cage and in the cage was a parrot.

He asked the parrot: "Was that you
who said Jesus is watching me?" "Yes", said the
parrot. The burglar breathed a sigh of relief, then he asked the
parrot: "What's your name?" "Clarence," said the
bird. "That's a dumb name for a parrot," sneered the
burglar.

"What idiot named you Clarence?"
The parrot said, "The same idiot who named the Rottweiler
Jesus."